The Belgian company Invineo (Andenne) has just completed an important fund raising with two public invests and the Cinoco-Palais du Vin group to enter the market. For 2 years, Thierry Tacheny, former director of SBS Belgium, developed the start-up, which is based on a patented technology.
The company focuses on the growing demand for wine by the glass in the hotel and catering sector and offers an extraordinary innovation: a high-tech machine that houses two-litre cartridges of wine and which, thanks to the software installed, "preserves, cools down, controls and serves each wine, with precision, at its ideal temperature".
Their goal is to offer a simple and economical solution to restaurateurs, helping them simplify their service and reduce waste. Unlike other companies that sell wine dispensers connected directly to the bottle, Invineo offers a more technological option, with wine cartridges to fit in the machine. In particular, the system makes it possible to calculate a series of data to better manage its stock according to demand.
Invineo invested a little over one million euros in 2016 and now wants to promote its invention in the hotel and catering industry. This is why the company is looking for 50 restaurateurs and hoteliers to test the product and launch the industrialisation process if the results are successful.
Thierry Tacheny worked with new partners to achieve this and raised 2.7 million euros to finalize the prototypes. Cinoco-Palais du Vin, the first independent wine distributor in Belgium, has invested more than 1 million euros in the project. The group, active in the sector for three centuries, has the ambition to develop internationally, beyond the Belgian-Luxembourg market.
For this, Invineo asked the consulting company Wine Intelligence to conduct several market studies. France, Great Britain and the United States are the most targeted markets at the moment.
"Our machines could not only be installed in bars and restaurants, but also in hotels and airports in "self-service" mode thanks to a payment system via a credit card or even via a smartphone, Thierry Tacheny explains. There's also the whole event market that you can prospect and you could even imagine launching an Invineo chain in the future, like Starbucks coffees! And, why not, one day enter the domestic market..."
Invineo could offer its first consumer machines for the home at a price below 1,000 euros according to initial CEO calculations. The consumer could change wine cartridges as he likes and explore an exponential offer, ranging from Bordeaux to Chianti, including Chilean, Australian and, of course, Belgian wines.
Sources: Trends and Invineo